


To Walk Without Limping

by Lt_Zoe_Jebkanto



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-19
Updated: 2015-11-19
Packaged: 2018-05-02 10:11:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5244446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lt_Zoe_Jebkanto/pseuds/Lt_Zoe_Jebkanto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some things are easy enough to overcome, while others...</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Walk Without Limping

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eireann](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eireann/gifts).



> This short, short story just about wrote itself during the course of a long, long, luxurious hot shower. Probably a very apt occurance as it came after a rather long writing "dry spell".

To Walk Without Limping

No. He wouldn’t look. No point. He was a Lieutenant. She was an Ensign. It   
wouldn’t be… proper.

And hadn’t he told himself as much before? At least once? Hell, man, be honest about it. Ten- more like fifty- times? It was becoming a habit. One that must be broken.

But he could hear her laughing on the far side of the mess. Laughing with… who?

It didn’t- absolutely did not! matter! He would sit here with his pineapple juice and his peanut butter pancakes and ignore her and her musical laugh.

When had that begun to be difficult?

During their early days serving on Enterprise he’d thought her too timid, too shy, to arouse his interest. Well, his serious interest anyway. Though he did have to admit even then he hadn’t minded the view if she was walking down a corridor in front of him. Her bum was every bit as nice as T’Pol’s, and that was saying a good deal.

Things were so much easier back then.

Now, glancing at her, even thinking about glancing at her, was trying to become a habit. One he was damned will going to break.

It was like when Enterprise escaped the Repair Station, where his leg had been completely healed of that wound suffered while disarming a weapon on the ship’s hull. He hadn’t experienced so much as a twinge of pain after that, yet in the days that followed, he noticed he still tended to limp. That small limp had left him feeling awkward and off-balance. Oddly vulnerable. Though he wouldn’t have voiced it, that feeling, more than the limp itself that had sent him to Sickbay. 

A habit, Dr. Phlox said. Only a pattern that had ingrained itself in both his brain and muscle memory. It would only take a bit of mental retraining to overcome it.

Well, he’d achieved that, and in quick order. This would be the same. He would simply remind himself not…

It came again, that laugh.

Not to look…

Oh, that musical laugh.

…look in her direction.

Even though it was that laugh that in recent months had begun to brighten his mornings. Or when the sound of her voice as she worked, swift and sure, at her bridge station, began to paint hidden smiles behind his buttoned-down proper weaponry officer’s mask. Or when the way she’d stared her insecurities of the early days in the face, revealing the tenacious young woman who lived beneath them sparked an admiration that had grown into respect and trust. That lovely young woman who… No! He would think of her only as his fellow officer, and he would not look…

He would not- should not- want… to… look in her direction.

“All right, Travis!” she called from the other side of the room, over where the trays were disposed of. “I’ll see you on the bridge in a few minutes.”

Odd, he’d always thought til now that he’d rather liked Ensign Mayweather. Still, he couldn’t help shooting a frown in his direction before his gaze traveled toward the sound of a door hissing open. To where Hoshi… Ensign Sato that was… was exiting the mess.

Yes, indeed. Every bit as nice as T’Pol’s.

Oh, hell, what was so bad about a little limp, anyway?


End file.
